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Woman escapes Boko Haram captors in Nigeria on way to bomb marketplace

By Ed Adamczyk
Khadija Ibrahim of Maiduguri, Nigeria, told police the story of her abduction and drugging, after which she was strapped with explosives and ordered to bomb a Kano, Nigeria, market.She escaped her captors when their car overheated. Photo by David Holt/Flickr/Wikimedia
Khadija Ibrahim of Maiduguri, Nigeria, told police the story of her abduction and drugging, after which she was strapped with explosives and ordered to bomb a Kano, Nigeria, market.She escaped her captors when their car overheated. Photo by David Holt/Flickr/Wikimedia

KANO, Nigeria, May 24 (UPI) -- A Nigerian woman told police she was kidnapped and drugged by Boko Haram insurgents, strapped with explosives and ordered to bomb a market.

Khadija Ibrahim escaped to a police station before she arrived at the textile market in Kano, and later told her story to Kano State Police Commissioner Abbati Maigari Dikko and Gov. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje. The mother of three was waiting for a bus in the city of Maidiguri, a hotbed of Boko Haram activity, when she was offered a ride by two men in a car. They abducted her, drugged her, removed some of her clothes and had a belt of explosives attached to her.

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After she regained consciousness in the car, Ibrahim said, she heard one captor telling her she was "going to do God's work" in bombing the Kantin Kwari textile market in Kano, about 370 miles from the bus stop where she was abducted.

They never arrived. She escaped her abductors when their car overheated, and found a person who took her to a police station.

She is in safe custody and "undergoing post-traumatic rehabilitation," Kano police spokesman Magaji Musa Majiya said.

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"If this woman had not regained consciousness, the story would have been different by now," Gov. Ganduje said.

Police said they are searching for the abductors, and for another female in the car, believed to be about 15 years of age, who was possibly drugged and may be another potential bomb carrier.

Boko Haram, which launched military operations in 2009 to establish a Muslim caliphate, has increasingly used women and children to carry explosives in attacks.

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